Grey
by Quicksilvermad
Summary: Theme #007 GREY: Movie-verse, 1st movie. It's that time of the year again. Tony remembers his parents on the day of their death—but this time he doesn't have to grieve alone.


**TITLE: **Grey  
**AUTHOR:** Quicksilvermad  
**SUMMARY:** Theme #007 GREY: Movie-verse (first movie). Its that time of the year again. Tony remembers his parents on the day of their death—but this time he doesnt have to grieve alone.  
**GENRE:** Hurt/Comfort  
**RATING:** PG  
**PAIRING: **Tony/Pepper  
**DISCLAIMER:** _Iron Man _etc. belong to Marvel Comics et. al.  
**AUTHOR'S NOTE: **For the 100 Themes Challenge over on LJ (at the Pepperony100 community). The hardest part about this one was not the emotion but figuring out the damned timeline for Tonys parents. I seem to remember it was mentioned there was quite the age gap between Howard and Maria—then the viral campaign for IM2 gave us the year they died (and in the movie, little Tony looked to be almost two in the reel of raw Stark Expo takes). And Tony mentioned his dad working on the Manhattan Project. Which ran from 1942-1945, so I stretched my imagination and had Howard working on the nuclear bombs when he was a young fellow. Howards smarts were passed on to Tony. He was a genius.

As for why I felt the need to write about grief now... My dog died over the weekend. I've had her since I was a kid, so it's been really rough on me dealing with it. Actually, I've kinda been holed up in my room since it happened. This is me trying to soldier on... Theme #7 is pretty important to me.

* * *

Tony never felt more connected to his parents than on _that day._ And for once, the weather in California was appropriate for the mood of the situation. The sky was overcast with grey clouds and heavy with the promise of cold rain.

He gave Happy the weekend off and Pepper came around his office the day before with her usual yearly statement ready on her tongue.

"I'll clear you schedule for tomorrow and take care of some busy work around here while you're out."

"Clear your own schedule, too."

He didn't look at her. Instead, he shuffled his Cintiq tablet from hand to hand before shoving it in his briefcase.

Pepper blinked up at him from beneath her fringe and felt her heart clench. "Excuse me?"

Tony finally lifted his head and met her gaze. "You're coming with me."

There was something heartbreaking in the deep warmth of his eyes. Pepper involuntarily took a half step forward and nodded at him.

"Okay. Yeah. Sure."

His eyes dropped again and he nervously chewed on his lower lip. "I'll pick you up at noon, okay?" Tony sounded a little unsure—slightly afraid that she would decline.

"Sure," she felt like a parrot.

The next day he showed up in her driveway in his father's old right-hand driven Aston Martin Vanquish—not dressed in an impeccable suit the way she thought he'd be. She felt entirely overdressed in her charcoal colored skirt and dark blue silk blouse when he opened the passenger door for her wearing jeans and his grey MIT hoodie. He didn't say a word about it other than commenting that her hair looked "lovely" in the French twist she managed to coax it into.

There were no words during the drive. No music, no conversation, no remembered stories… She felt like an outsider—horribly so.

He did, however, begin humming a low tune as he pulled the car into the graveyard. Pepper had not heard it before but kept her voice to herself—she would ask him about it much later. Three days sounded like a good delay…

The car rumbled to a stop ten yards away from two weeping angels carved from grey granite. There were no accompanying headstones. As she followed Tony closer to the statues, Pepper could see the names and dates carved on the bases.

_Maria Stark  
__1953-1991_

_Howard Stark  
__1923-1991_

Tony knelt by his mother's name and brushed some stray blades of grass from the cold granite. Pepper had never seen the Stark family graves and it had not registered until the moment she saw Tony carefully fussing over his mother's grave that Howard Stark had been fifty years old when he married Maria.

Tony turned eighteen a few weeks after their death.

She shifted uncomfortably behind him and debated the phrasing on how she was going to tell him she'd wait for him in the car when he spoke.

"Mom didn't want to go out that night."

"What?" Pepper wasn't sure she'd actually heard him say what he did.

"That Christmas party. She was putting her earrings on and I walked over to help her with her necklace like usual and she said it. 'Tony, I just want to stay in tonight and have dinner with you.'"

He leaned his weight back onto his heels and spared his father's grave a glance before looking up at Pepper. "Get down here, you're gonna give me a neck ache," he said and tugged on her wrist. She ended up sprawled awkwardly beside him and wasn't sure what to do with her hands.

"Why didn't she?" she finally asked.

"What, ask my dad if she could just hang back and eat some left-over turkey with her son?"

Pepper just looked at him. She knew him well enough to realize this was exactly what he asked himself every year around this time. Tony kept her eyes trapped in his for as long as he could stand it before turning back to look at the weeping angel above him.

"Why didn't she say anything?" he wondered.

Pepper adjusted her skirt and leaned against him a little bit as the bite of a winter breeze cut through her thin jacket. Tony consciously slid his arm around her shoulders and dragged her closer to his body. The silence of the cemetery let her hear him breathe and almost amplified that strange low hum of his arc reactor.

After a moment, Pepper cleared her throat. "My dad left my mom when I was six," she whispered.

She said nothing more but felt his grip tighten around her shoulders.

"I miss Mom," Tony finally admitted as softly as his voice would allow. Pepper almost felt his words more than she heard them—his ribs were pressed against the length of her arm. Feeling awkward, she twisted herself to mimic the hold he had on her. She could feel the muscles of his sides twitch as her fingertips settled.

"Do you think…" he trailed off. Pepper shifted a little further in his arms and found his eyes once again.

She answered his half posed question with conviction. "She'd be proud. All moms are when their kids do something incredible," Pepper was proud of him, too, but left that unspoken for the time being. Instead, she focused on bringing the good memories he had back into focus. "Remember that story you told me about your mom finally seeing Dummy and Butterfingers?"

A smile started at the corners of Tony's eyes. "Yeah."

Pepper coaxed a full smile out of him with one of her own and listened as he told her the story again. It was getting colder and she was feeling a little hungry but none of that mattered as Tony Stark sat with her in front of his parents' graves and told her his good stories from childhood in trade for some of hers.

As they left almost two hours later—Pepper complaining of numb feet and Tony yanking his MIT hoodie over her head before she could deny his offer—Tony felt a little less alone in life than he had last year.

* * *

**END**


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